Boxing Rostrum

It seems Floyd Mayweather is on the shortlist for a TV series called Dancing With The Stars. If he gets included in that show, the boxer would be involved in filming it during preparation for his clash with Ricky Hatton on December 8th.

I think it bizarre that Floyd would even consider a distraction like that in the build up to such a big fight.

You could say it shows the confidence he has in his ability to handle the Brit, but great fighters before him have paid the penalty for lack of proper focus.

Lennox Lewis, for one, springs to mind. Lennie’s complacent prep for the Hasim Rahman fight at Carnival City, South Africa, included filming scenes for Ocean’s Eleven in Vegas and getting to meet Nelson Mandela.

Come fight night, an ill prepared Lewis – complete with his new nickname, The Lion - got bombed out by a right hand in the fifth and lost the heavyweight title.

I’m not suggesting Mayweather will be as lackadaisical as Lennox was in his approach to December 8th but boxing at the highest level demands 100% application, ahead of the fight as much as during it. And that’s the case no matter who you are.

Maybe Floyd can take time out for that TV twinkletoes stuff and get away with it but you’d have to call it a risk. Hatton will be primed for the job, and coming on full throttle. That’s what Floyd Mayweather should be bearing in mind. Fully.

Irish boxing got a huge shock in Dublin on Saturday when home idol Bernard Dunne was clobbered in eighty six seconds by Spaniard, Kiko Martinez. Dunne thereby gave up his European super bantam crown and his undefeated record.

The outcome wasn’t a shock to the visitor’s camp, though. Nor, apparently, was the manner if it. Seems that Martinez and his people scoured Dublin betting shops to avail themselves of the 66-1 odds being offered against his winning in the opening session.

Fightnews.com says they managed to get five grand on at that price and then, when the layers’ incurred liabilities had forced the price down, kept the plunge going by investing twice as much again at lesser odds. That’s what you call confidence, I guess. It may not be unusual to come away from a title fight with a pile of money to show, but it sure is when most of that loot has come from bookmakers and not the contracted purse.

Dunne’s defeat was the third devastating setback for British or Irish little men of late and, painful to say it, puts the guys in perspective.

Michael Hunter was unbeaten and brimming with confidence going into his fight for the vacant IBF super bantam crown, but slick Canadian lefty Steve Molitor took him apart in five rounds. The gulf in class was way too big.

Nicky Cook got the same message when disputing the WBO featherweight vacancy with Steve Luevano. Nicky’s European champion status and unblemished log counted for nothing once the bell rang. He took a real beating.

Bernard Dunne was rated in the top ten by all the so called ‘Big Four’ sanctioning bodies but, like the other two guys above, had got a high international ranking without having faced any transatlantic quality or any of the Latino or Oriental fighters who populate the upper reaches of both divisions. On what he had actually done in the ring, Bernard was occupying a false position. And that’s a fact.

Although Martinez is a fellow European who, like Dunne, has never been up against a reliable yardstick in world terms, his blitzing of the Irishman will see him take over Bernard’s previous ranking slots. A premature elevation, I’d say, but at least we do know that Kiko can whack – he’s now 17-0 with 14 kayos – and at just twenty one, if he has the application and the right tutor, could one day grow into a proper world class performer.

The bookmakers who got burned by that Spanish activity in Dublin might yet make money out of Bernard Dunne. For a while now, some firms have been giving odds as to which will be first to capture a WBC,WBA,IBF, or WBO world title – Bernard Dunne or John Duddy. Not unnaturally, there’s been plenty of interest in that market amongst Irish fight fans but, for me, it’s a win-win situation for the bookies. Can’t see either of those guys giving them cause to pay out, now or ever.

Vic Darchinyan was IBF flyweight champion and looked like he might be turning into a great one until colliding with Nonito Donaire’s brother-avenging left hook in Connecticut last month.

That five rounds defeat also saw Darchinyan lose the IBO title, something I wouldn’t bother mentioning were it not for the fact that the IBO, anxious to get him back on its champion roster, has sanctioned Vic’s next fight as being for its vacant super flyweight crown.

I have nothing against Darchinian’s nomination for a title bout. Anybody can get beaten, and although the way he lost to Donaire was as emphatic as it was unexpected, who’s to say he won’t come back from it better than ever. Others have.

The Armenian may even have needed to step up a division. Could be he was finding it tough to hit the flyweight limit. Whatever, Vic’s a proven man at the very top level and I have to accept the IBO is doing nothing wrong in seeing him as a genuine contender at super fly.

Acceptance ends there, though. The guy who will box Darchinian for the ‘title’ is Federico Catubay, a so-so Filipino who has been beaten thirteen times, with no less than seven of those setbacks coming inside schedule.

As a professional boxer, Catubay is entitled to take the chance that’s been presented to him. I don’t have a problem there. And I can see that Darchinian might view this sort of match as an ideal way of easing himself back into the groove. But how does the IBO justify giving the bout a world title label?

“World Title” vacancies are supposed to be contested by the two top ranked boxers. Catubay is nowhere near to being a top ten guy, and never will be, but that’s obviously not of any relevance to those lovely people at the IBO.

Their record in such matters speaks for itself and will surely continue to do so. There's just no stopping them. I reckon the IBO would have no qualms about sanctioning Vic Darchinian against Mickey Mouse, except that Mickey will be seventy nine in November.

At the Melbourne Olympics of 1956, Scotland’s Dick McTaggart won the lightweight gold medal. He also took the Val Barker award as the tournament’s outstanding boxer. That was quite a compliment to McTaggart’s skills, considering the other champions included Laszlo Papp, the fabulous Hungarian who was winning a third consecutive gold there to go with those he’d captured in London and Helsinki.

McTaggart struck further gold at the European championships and also at what were then called the British Empire Games. He was a huge star of amateur boxing. But he never turned pro.

Dick McTaggart was nobody’s fool. For all his achievements as a boxer, he recognized a world of difference between the amateur code in which he excelled and the professional branch of the sport, and made the judgement that his particular qualities would not have brought similar success, or anything like it, in the field of paid pugilism. I’d say it was the right call. Dick himself has never expressed any regrets about it. And these days, fifty years on, the man who wouldn’t turn is still an icon of Scottish sport.

On today’s scene, French light welter Willy Blain puts me in mind of the great Scot. While Blain never tasted Olympic glory he did prove himself a top performer just the same by striking light welter gold at the world amateur championships of 2003. And, like McTaggart, Willy owed his success to a slick southpaw style based on defensive expertise.

I’m not suggesting Blain has the same standing in the sport, nor that they’re peas from the same pod, but the similarities are there alright. So is a shared failing. That’s why I was a bit surprised when the Frenchman, unlike McTaggart, did take the plunge on a pro career nearly three years ago.

Notwithstanding his natural boxing skills, Willy Blain is relatively harmless. That may be an admirable quality in everyday life but it’s not much use in a pro boxing ring if you can’t raise the firepower to subdue or even discourage someone who’s giving you the charge. And the pro game, because of longer fights and the way they’re fought, places bigger demands on boxers than does its amateur cousin. A different kind of ruggedness and durability is needed. That’s something I don’t see in Blain and it’s something I don’t think Dick McTaggart saw in himself.

You might tell me that’s a load of crap, on account of Willy has edged his way to 17-0 and captured an item called the WBO Inter-Continental light welterweight title in the process. Well, that’s true enough as far as it goes, but the numbers mean nothing to me, and nor does the belt.

Blain’s pro debut saw him on the floor and struggling to get a majority decision over four rounds. Since then he’s been studiously kept away from anyone nasty. Despite that, though, he still got to show fragility again when winning the Inter-Continental wotsit against Juan Mosquera. Willy hit the deck in the tenth round of that bout, and was clearly affected throughout whenever Mosquera touched him properly, while his own punches, of course, didn’t bother the Panamanian at any stage. A unanimous verdict went Willy’s way but adopted-home advantage must have impacted on that from what I saw of the action. Bottom line says Blain gets chased down by any genuine top ten guy. Any top thirty guy could probably beat him too, but protective judging might make it tough to get that reflected on the cards because there’s no way they’ll risk letting Willy box outside of Germany from here on. Unless it’s in France.

Despite having nothing to justify its view, the WBA has seen fit to rank Willy Blain number six light welter in the world. Nonsensical. But then, just when you think the WBA has taken stupidity to its upper limit, along comes the good old WBO to prove you wrong. That august body has Blain installed as number two contender.

In the land of the brain dead, WBO is king. For now.

Arthur Abraham’s plan to invade America and prove himself the world’s best middleweight is still on course after he wiped out Khoren Gevor with an eleventh round left hook to retain IBF recognition on Saturday night.

Boxing should be rubbing its hands at Abraham’s single mindedness. Having an undisputed champ in the oldest, most glamourous division – apart from heavyweight – would give a huge boost to the game’s failing image of recent times.

Give the people what they want. That’s the mantra of any successful business, and although big money is being made, by some, in boxing’s present day fragmented structure, what the people want is uniformity and champions they can acknowledge and relate to.

All of a sudden, it seems that that’s what the boxers themselves want too. They probably always did, to be fair, but now a few of them are looking to make it happen, and being allowed to - at least for the moment - by the string pullers.

October gives us a triple belt lightweight unification title fight, with Juan Diaz (WBA and WBO) pitted against Julio Diaz (IBF). That’s something to celebrate in itself but I think we can be optimistic that, once it’s done, the remaining claimant - WBC champ David Diaz - will want in on the act too. Fighters have pride. They don’t like to be looked down on or made to feel inferior, and a guy with one belt is bound to feel uneasy when someone else is walking about with three. Especially if it’s constantly being pointed out to him.

Super middleweight has a similar treat for us in November. Joe Calzaghe and Mikkel Kessler square off in a battle of the undefeated. Calzaghe’s ten year WBO reign already makes him the champ, but Kessler’s likewise unbeaten record and acquisition of the WBC and WBA crowns gives him a genuine claim as well. This is a definitive title fight. Whoever leaves the Cardiff ring victorious will be the legitimate super middleweight champion of the world. No doubt about that.

Canada’s Lucian Bute may have taken the IBF version before the Cardiff showdown comes around but that would only give him a David Diaz type position, at best. If Bute or anybody else wants to claim top spot at super middle they are going to have to beat the man first, and after November 3rd the man will be either Welsh or Danish.

The cruiserweights are also close to getting their house in order. Jean Marc Mormeck and David Haye go at it for the Frenchman’s WBC and WBA titles in Paris just one week after the big Cardiff show. Prospects for full unification, though, depend a great deal on what happens there.

Haye’s future campaigning will be done at heavyweight, no matter what transpires on that Parisian date, so a win for him would put chaos back into the cruiser scene. Because of that, and it’s nothing personal against David Haye, boxing’s interests would be better served if Mormeck prevails.

I know one thing. WBO champ Enzo Maccarinelli would jump at the chance of fighting Jean Marc. The Welsh plan was for Enzo to first accommodate IBF titlist Steve Cunningham, but if Steve’s not available to accept that test - which was proposed as a support feature on the Calzaghe bill - I’m sure a straight crack at Mormeck for the Frenchman’s two belts plus his own would do very nicely thank you, while bringing the winner consensus recognition as champ anyway, just like Juan or Julio, Joe or Mikkel.

A climate of change is hardly running through the fight game. To say that would be going too far. But the kind of unification matches we’ve been talking about are great for boxing and I’ll certainly settle for more of the same.

I think it was George Orwell who said that the average Englishman of working class - my own station - considers it effeminate to pronounce any foreign word correctly. Absurd, of course, and just a mark of juvenile self consciousness, but the pathetic part about it is it’s probably still as true now as it was when he made the observation. To a large extent anyway.

A similar weakness exists, and always has, among certain boxers. Many boxers, particularly Latinos, believe it's a sissy cop out to go in the ring against a bad-mouthing wild man and do anything other than meet him head on, even though a cuter strategy is the obvious thing to use, so long as the ability is there to execute it. With those guys it’s a fear of embarrassment, of losing face, that governs their actions, whether that diminishes their chances of winning a fight or not. Not grown up thinking, is it. And we might well see an example of it in three weeks time.

They’re calling it ‘The Brawl’ and, while I’m not for fight promotions having titles like the movies do, that particular label sits nicely with the upcoming Fernando Vargas-Ricardo Mayorga bout.

It can hardly be anything else, given the nature of the two boxers and the personal animosity involved. But there’s always that kind of atmosphere when Mayorga fights, isn’t there. It seems he doesn’t like anybody, and nobody likes him.

We all like to see his fights, though. Well, most of us do. He might be obnoxious in mouth and manner but Ricardo always brings excitement with him, and that’s the only thing that’s guaranteed here in a contest where anything might happen.

Vargas is the naturally bigger man, and has a better ring pedigree. Fernando has the reach on Mayorga too, and if he looks to optimize his advantages should really be able to dictate the pattern of the fight. If he has enough left. A few years back, when both men were inside younger bodies, I feel that Vargas could have walked into Mayorga and been too strong, and too good. Maybe he still can, and still is, but the proper call must surely be to get this guy under control with orthodox boxing and then look to break him down from there. But does Vargas have the discipline to do that in the face of Mayorga’s rantings? I seriously doubt it.

Ricardo Mayorga was outclassed and stopped by De La Hoya and Trinidad, who were too sharp and skilled for him, but he remains a handful against people who fight him on his own terms. Fernando Vargas looked a badly shot fighter last time against Mosley and, if that was a true indicator of where he’s at, Mayorga might well climb all over him whatever tactics Vargas employs. Or maybe not. It’s one of those where you really don’t know. That's what makes this fight so appealing. I can’t wait to see how it unfolds.

IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham says he’s prepared to abandon home comforts and go in search of proper glory after he’s taken care of business with Khoren Gevor this coming Saturday.

That’s a big statement of ambition. Armenian born Abraham is an idol in Germany and could have stayed put and defended his portion again and again, for very good money, against anybody the IBF had a mind to sanction. Many fighters would have been happy to settle for that.

Despite his apparently rejecting that easier option, though, most would have expected Abraham to at least have a unification fight at the German end first before contemplating a transatlantic move. Felix Sturm has the WBA title. There’s been talk about a match between the pair, plenty of talk, but nothing has come of it despite both sides claiming to be keen.

A personal view is that Arthur Abraham would willingly box Sturm any time. I think Arthur really does believe he’s the best middleweight in the world and that’s why, in the absence of progress on the Sturm front, he intends going to the States to force his case.

That will involve meeting, and beating, the winner of the Jermain Taylor-Kelly Pavlik battle, as long as that winner is Kelly Pavlik. Nothing against Jermain, but he’s said he’ll be moving up in weight after this one and if he moves up having won that fight, the WBC and WBO titles they’re disputing will be thrown into chaos.

We know how these people operate, don’t we. If Taylor wins, then vacates, the two bodies concerned will name different pairings to sort out a successor and we’ll be another two years away, minimum, from seeing an undisputed middleweight champ.

Should Kelly Pavlik beat Taylor next month, though, we’ll be in business because I’m pretty sure Abraham will keep his half of the ball rolling come Saturday night by destroying Khoren Gevor. And Pavlik is just like Arthur. He’ll fight anybody, any time. Roll on.

Oscar De La Hoya has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the Ibragimov-Holyfield heavyweight title fight, WBO style, in Moscow in October.

As an honoured guest, Mr Putin would naturally be seated ringside, unless Oscar could persuade him just this once to switch codes from judo – in which the President holds a black belt – and slot him in on the undercard against an appropriate opponent.

Tony Blair would fit the bill nicely. Not likely to happen, though. I mean, Lord Baghdad is completely opposed to violence of any kind, isn’t he.

Plenty of boxers, especially former amateur stars, kick off their pro careers with a winning streak. Sequence building of that kind, though, usually comes through the bashing up of inferior opponents and, while that may be good for the boxer’s ego, only the gullible would attach much meaning to it. Fact is, you can’t begin to judge a man until he’s been put to the test.

Case in point is welterweight prospect Andre Berto. Berto looked the part, spectacularly so at times, in moving his record to 18-0, and you couldn’t help but be impressed by his weaponry, but he didn’t meet with a whole lot of resistance along the way. Nor did he have to pay much heed to boxing’s number one rule - protect yourself at all times - because very little was coming back at him in the course of those fights.

The climate changed in fight nineteen. Andre Berto stayed undefeated with that recent points win over Cosme Rivera but got knocked down for the first time in his career and had to fight hard to keep on top of things.

His performance against Rivera seems to have turned some off Berto as a potential champ but I see it differently. In fact, I like him better now than I did before. At least we now know he’s got substance to go with the flash. Many of these all conquering types fall apart when it’s their turn to taste the floor but Berto has shown he can get up and win, and also shown he doesn’t get discouraged when the other guy stands up to his punches and fires back.

Berto has David Estrada next in Atlantic City. It’s another reasonable test. Like Rivera, Estrada has been in with top men and knows what it’s all about up there and, like Rivera, will treat this as a chance to get his own ambitions back on track. Andre probably learned more from the Cosme Rivera fight than he had in the previous eighteen, and the learning should continue against Estrada, who can also teach him a trick or two, but I’m fairly confident we’ll be talking 20-0 when it’s over. The question is, what then for Andre Berto?

What I’d like to see is a match between him and Alfonso Gomez. I do like Gomez. Although he came to the fore on The Contender, Alfonso’s not just a media creation. The boy can fight a bit.

On that first Contender series, Gomez was a puppy-fat middleweight going against naturally bigger men, but wasn’t fazed at all. He licked Peter Manfredo fair and square in their first go and also bettered Jesse Brinkley for the third place slot on finals night. Alfonso has plenty of spunk. And he knows what he’s doing in the ring.

The crushing of Arturo Gatti in seven rounds doesn’t mean a lot because Arturo had so little left to offer, but that’s not Alfonso Gomez’ fault. And Gomez had been brought in there as, supposedly, the ideal opponent to let Gatti swan song on a winning note. Pre-fight, that was the favoured outcome with odds layers and scribes alike. Didn’t work out that way, though, did it.

Gomez took control from the start, hardly missed with a punch throughout, and dominated Gatti more completely than Baldomir had a year ago. And the final barrage was right on the money. I know Arturo was washed up but Gomez nonetheless looked composed and clinical to me, and I don’t think he’d embarrass himself in a more demanding situation.

Gomez is a throwback type, in style and attitude. Watching him stalk Gatti, and watching how he picked and threw his shots, I got a feeling that the pictures should have been coming at us in black and white, like on the old reels. Alfonso is also old school in the way he looks at things. When asked in the post fight chat who he’d like to meet next, Gomez said he had no preference, that it was his team’s job to make the matches and his job to box whoever they came up with.

Well, when his team does get around to making that next match I’m clinging to a slim hope that Andre Berto will be in the opposite corner. Berto might become a world champ one day. I doubt Alfonso Gomez ever will. Put them together right now, though, and you can be pretty damn sure we’d see something memorable.

Looks like Erik Morales means it when he says he won’t fight again. I hope that pledge sticks. The great Mexican is not what he was and there’s no longer a future for him in this, the hardest game of all.

Losing to David Diaz was no disgrace. Morales, as he now is, didn’t have the strength or the gas to keep Diaz under control for twelve rounds but he gave it a good try as always, and at least went out still competing at the top level.

So Erik didn’t get to win the WBC lightweight title. No matter. A boxer of Erik Morales’ calibre didn’t need a fourth ‘world title’ to cement his place as a great one. That status has long since been established.

It might seem a bizarre thing to say but I’m actually quite pleased Morales didn’t win this fight. Not because I wanted him to lose but because victory would likely have seen him continue his boxing career. As well as being a great fighter, Erik has always been a proud one. He believed he was the best and considered it a duty to prove as much by looking to take on the toughest, most dangerous assignments out there. That’s what drove him. He had no appetite for easy, slapabout action.

Even had Morales managed to beat David Diaz and capture what is supposedly boxing’s premier belt, the WBC version, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been enough for him. He would have wanted to be the real champ. Anyone wanting to be that in the lightweight division right now has got to go through the other Diaz, Juan Diaz, and that’s a chore that would have brought Erik a lot of grief. Yep, far better that things worked out the way they have.

Erik Morales is my all time favourite Mexican boxer. I just loved watching him at his peak. Virtually all his fights were thrillers, many of them ring classics. You paid your money and you got a war. That’s how he’ll be remembered.

If Erik was my favourite, though, I couldn’t hand-on-heart pick him as the best to come out of Mexico. Most give that nod to Julio Cesar Chavez, and I’d have to agree he belongs ahead of Morales. He had more physicality than Erik, which gives him the edge for me. I also reckon Barrera rates just in front of Morales, not because he’s been necessarily a superior fighter but on account of he’s proven more adaptable. Barrera turned to classic boxing to outclass Naseem Hamed and went into that same mode in his rematch with Rocky Juarez, but it seems to me that machismo always had too strong a grip on Erik Morales for him to even contemplate similar adjustments. I suppose Erik was his own worst enemy in that respect.

Best Mexican ever? Not Erik Morales, I’m sad to say. Nor Barrera. Not even Chavez. For me, there’s no problem at all in supplying an answer to that question. Has to be Salvador Sanchez.

Ruslan Chagaev’s withdrawal from the unification bout with Sultan Ibragimov is something the sport of boxing could have done without. Had that bout taken place, there must have been a real chance of Wladimir Klitschko facing the winner to clarify things further still.

Now we have Evander Holyfield stepping in. Everybody loves Evander, and I can actually see him giving the Russian a serious argument, at least to the half way mark, but boxing will be the loser no matter who wins that fight.

The WBA and WBO had okayed the Chagaev-Ibragimov match on account of each man would have been making a voluntary defence of his title. The same circumstances no longer apply.

Should Ibragimov defeat Holyfield in what now becomes his voluntary defence he would next have to accommodate Tony Thompson who, as the WBO’s number one contender, will get a mandatory shot at that title.

So much for hopes that the heavyweight mess might get sorted sometime soon then. Mustn’t give up, though. I still feel that the respective claimants want to prove themselves the best and by early next year the conditions could again be right for the elimination process to be initiated, given willingness on all sides.

Ibragimov or Holyfield should have tangled with Thompson come January or February, and the survivor will then be entitled to take another voluntary. The original WBA/WBO deal could then be on again, provided a fit again Chagaev likewise frees himself by getting his own mandatory obligation dealt with next time out.

Whether that happens or not largely depends on the nature of Chagaev’s unspecified illness. Should Ruslan feel the need to ease himself back in with a less demanding job, he would have to follow up by taking on the WBA’s top ranked guy, which probably wouldn’t happen until next spring. Such timing would throw any unification plans right out of sync and we’d be even further away from what we all want, and boxing badly needs – an undisputed heavyweight champ.

When it first came into being I didn’t believe I could find myself thinking this, never mind saying it, but the TV reality show “The Contender” has surely done boxing a favour in the last couple of years by grabbing and holding the attention of viewers who might otherwise have shown no interest at all in the sport, or had already developed an aversion to it.

The plethora of silly titles in boxing today, which regularly sees even mediocre performers picking up championship belts of some sort simply because there are so many of them around, with more being created all the time, is enough to turn anybody off. And the younger generation certainly have shied away in droves because of it.

Ironic, then, that a TV show’s elimination format should cut out that crap and portray boxing as it’s meant to be. Full on competition leading to a natural conclusion. One ultimate winner.

The five rounds fight schedule is a must because of all the background stuff that has to be fitted in to the show’s time slot, but it’s also a big plus on account of guaranteeing hot action in the ring. Given only five rounds to play with, a slow start is obviously not advisable, but motivation for the guys to get stuck in is high anyway considering the prize at stake. Through the show’s first two series most of the bouts have been hard fought, some fiercely so, and the TV audience has got what it’s been looking for, entertainment wise.

Viewers have also got to know a bit about the boxers themselves. They’ve been able to see that most ring warriors are nice, decent people outside of office hours, a realization that can only be good for the game at large.

The third Contender series has dispensed with the services of trainers Tommy Gallagher and Jeremy Williams. Don’t really see why. I thought they fitted in well enough. Then again, bringing in Buddy McGirt and Pepe Correa might help keep things fresh.

On the subject of change, it will be interesting to see if they're still using the same maniacal ring announcer this time around. Never seen or heard anything like it. I'm wondering if the guy escaped from a secure unit or if they just bring him in on a chaperoned day release basis. One thing's for sure - his demented screaming into the microphone is the most unnerving sight I’ve witnessed in a boxing ring since watching Liston stare at Patterson just before the opening bell in Chicago.

I’ve always had a fascination with Jack Johnson. Johnson was boxing’s first black heavyweight champion of the world, and probably its first great heavyweight champion, and he earned fame and notoriety on a global scale – quite a feat in an age of primitive communications where there was no such thing as radio commentary on boxing, never mind instant TV images or the internet. But, then, Jack Johnson really was something else.

Being a great champion didn’t make him popular, though, did it. The opposite. His arrogance and non-conformist behaviour saw him hated by white America, hatred that spawned the era of the Great White Hope, a nationwide search for a paleface who could batter Johnson and bring back the title to where “it belonged.”

Society attitudes don’t come sicker than that, for sure, but the quest to overthrow Jack Johnson was such an obsession that all sorts of aspirants came out of the woodwork, mostly no-hopers, together with a shoal of characters who helped make it, for me, the most intriguing period in boxing history.

I have a fair knowledge of those times, if I say so myself, but I’ve recently got to know a bit more about that era and the people who populated it.

Take the ill fated Luther McCarty. I knew Luther had been probably the most likely of the prospects to emerge during Johnson’s reign, and may well have troubled the champ had he lived to have the chance, but I didn’t know he also used to help out his dad on Nebraska’s travelling snake oil circuit. Apparently, McCarty’s father was a three hundred pounder called White Eagle. White Eagle wasn’t his real name, but business is business, and that name went with the image of selling liquid cure-alls from the back of a wagon, which he did after first drawing a crowd by performing Native American dances of an improvised nature. Whatever it takes.

Full respect to the Eagle for his entrepreneurial spirit but the real top guy in the dodgy potions department was a gentleman called Dr B.J. Kendall. The good doctor did the rounds peddling his hugely popular blackberry medicine for stomach ailments. Seems it got the job done alright, getting rid of his customers' stomach pains and giving them a terrific all round boost, results which made for a roaring trade in repeat orders. The blackberry gave the elixir an acceptable sort of name and probably a distinctive colour, but chances are its addictive quality owed more to its other two ingredients ..... 122-proof whiskey reinforced with opium.

Another larger than life specimen from way back then was Willus Britt, manager of Johnson challenger Stanley Ketchel, the great middleweight champion. His brother, Jimmy Britt, was a rough and tumble lightweight of the time whose career I’m well aware of, but Jimmy wasn’t as hard hided or hard hearted as Willus himself.

One time, Jimmy Britt was taking a beating and had been knocked down and Willus, unhappy at his brother for not fighting back and thereby betraying family honour, shouted bravely from ringside, “Get up, you unnatural son of a bitch! Have you no regard for my feelings?”

Willus Britt is also said to have been responsible for the so called Californian Native Son decision, whereby any Californian boxing on home turf would automatically get the decision if he was still alive at the final bell. Must have been comforting to have that kind of reassurance going into the ring, eh?

I gleaned the above bits and pieces, and more, from a book by Graeme Kent called “The Great White Hopes.” The author has done a real good job with this. If anybody out there shares my interest in those bygone days, I’m saying you should go and buy yourself a copy or – better still – have somebody else buy it for you, which is how I came to get hold of mine. Either way, you won't be disappointed.